How can I make my video business more profitable?

Introduction

It's all well and good winning work as a video production company or freelancer, but how can you be certain that come month end, you've not only covered all the bills but you're actually putting money aside to invest into you, your business, your kit, or your family? The answer lies in understanding which of your projects, clients, and industries are truly profitable—and which ones are quietly draining your resources.

In this Q&A session, we tackle one of the most important questions any video professional can ask: How can I make my video business more profitable? The answer might surprise you—it's not about raising prices or tracking time more carefully. It's about knowing exactly who your most profitable clients are and marketing exclusively to them.

What You'll Learn

• Why profitability analysis is the single most impactful thing you can do for your video business
• A practical spreadsheet exercise to identify your most profitable clients, industries, and project types
• How to determine whether direct clients or agency work is more profitable for you
• The step-by-step process for analysing your past projects using accounting data
• How to use profitability data to shape your marketing and attract only the right clients

Why This Matters

After building a video production company valued at over $20 million—working with brands like Adidas, Nike, and Estée Lauder, employing 33 full-time staff and hundreds of freelancers—and then losing it all to bankruptcy, a painful truth emerged: many of the projects delivered over those eight years cost more to deliver than the payment received. They were unprofitable. And that was a major contributor to the stress that ultimately brought the business down.

It's basic business sense, but in order to grow, achieve financial freedom, and reduce stress, your projects need to be profitable. Working with prestigious brands feels great and makes for impressive case studies, but if those projects are losing money, they're actively harming your business. The goal isn't just to win work—it's to win the right work.

The Profitability Analysis Exercise

The exercise covered in this video allows you to identify profitable projects, clients, and industries, then use that information to shape your marketing so you're only attracting the most profitable opportunities into your business. Here's how it works:

Step 1: Gather Your Data – If you have an accountancy platform like Xero, QuickBooks, or similar, download a CSV or XLS file of all your invoices over the past 12 to 24 months. This timeframe is the sweet spot—long enough to see patterns, recent enough to be relevant.

Step 2: Use the Template Spreadsheet – Copy and paste your invoice data into the template spreadsheet (available via the link below the video). The spreadsheet does the heavy lifting, allowing you to categorise each project by industry, video genre, and whether it was direct to client or via agency.

Step 3: Estimate Profitability – For each project, add a profitability indicator. If you don't have exact figures, estimate based on your memory of what took a long time versus what was delivered efficiently. You'll know which projects caused headaches and which were smooth.

Step 4: Review the Results – The spreadsheet's review sections will show you which clients, industries, and video genres are most profitable, as well as whether agency work or direct client relationships generate better returns for your business.

Using Data to Drive Decisions

This isn't about rigidly pursuing only profitable work at the expense of everything else. You might hate a particular industry even if it's profitable, or love a type of project that doesn't pay as well. It's important that you enjoy what you do. But this analysis gives you the data to make informed decisions rather than guessing.

The ultimate goal is to attract a constant flow of profitable projects. If you create a constant flow of unprofitable clients, you're very quickly going to go out of business. But if you're confident that your perfect client is profitable, you can go big on attracting those prospects with absolute confidence.

Once you've completed this analysis, you can select the industries you're going to market to—and just like that, you've eradicated unprofitable industries, clients, or types of videos from your pipeline before they even arrive.

Take Action

There are plenty of ways to increase profitability in your video business—developing systems, outsourcing work, tracking time, raising prices. But from 16 years of experience in the industry, this profitability analysis is the one task that has had the most dramatic effect on the bottom line.

Download the template spreadsheet via the link below this video, export your invoice data, and complete the exercise. It should only take a few minutes, but the insights you gain will shape every marketing decision you make going forward. Then, sign up for the free Lead Generation Machine course to learn the 10-step process that will ensure you drive a constant flow of profitable opportunities into your video business.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:00
It's all well and good winning work as a video production company or a video freelancer, but how can we make sure that our video business is full of profit? And how can you be certain that come month end, you've not only covered all the bills, but you're actually putting some money aside to invest into you, your business, into kit or your family? Well, that is exactly what we're going to cover in today's Q&A. How can I make my video business more profitable?

00:00:29:00 - 00:01:07:00
A quick bit of context as to why this is so important. As you may know, I started my first production company from scratch and built it to being valued at over $20 million. We were working with brands such as Adidas, Nike, and Estée Lauder. We had 33 full-time members of staff and hundreds of freelancers working on projects around the world at any given time. But then I lost it. We filed for bankruptcy. Don't worry, I took time out to review everything and build back stronger, which I talk more about in other videos, but I wanted to give you some context as to why the answer to this question is so important and how I came to develop what I'm going to share with you today.

00:01:07:00 - 00:02:03:00
Because what we're going to do here today is an exercise that will allow you to identify profitable projects, clients, industries, and then we'll talk about how we use that information to shape our marketing to ensure that you are only attracting the most profitable types of projects and opportunities into your video business. There are many other ways to make your video business more profitable. Time tracking, bulk buying, increasing your prices, but none of them have as big of an impact as what we're going to talk about today. So, when I lost my first production business, I took some time out to reflect and get over the embarrassment of it all. I remember sitting down in my office at home thinking about the 2500 plus projects that we had won and delivered over that period. Some of the projects I loved and some of them I hated. But one of the reasons that I'd become so stressed was that some of the projects that we were working on, many in fact, cost us more to deliver than we were paid. They were unprofitable.

00:02:03:00 - 00:03:18:00
It was a major reason for the stress that I had accumulated. It was great to work with brands such as Adidas, Nike, and Estée Lauder. And I love to speak about those brands and the work that we did with them. But I knew deep down that these projects, these unprofitable projects were the ones that caused so many issues. It's basic business sense, but in order to grow, to achieve financial freedom, to reduce stress, you need your projects to be profitable. My wife had seen the stress that I had endured, and I promised her that I was never going to get into that position again. So, what did I do? Well, I created the spreadsheet that we're going to work through in this video. As you'll come to learn, I now ensure that data leads my decisions. I've always been a data geek. When I was young, I played a lot of cricket. I still do, but not to the level that I once did. And as a side note to those that know the game, it's a lot like baseball. When I was young, I'd keep track of all of my scores, the balls that I faced, the fours that I hit, the sixes that I hit, where I hit them, how I was out, and I'd collect all of that information season after season into a spreadsheet. I'd build all kinds of reports that gave me an insight into how I was performing, my weak points, my strengths. That's when I fell in love with data. And I've carried that love for data into my business life and now into the businesses of my clients.

00:03:18:00 - 00:04:21:00
The spreadsheet that I'm going to share with you has literally changed my life. It's enabled me and my clients to make solid business decisions and to go after only the most profitable clients. The spreadsheet that I developed allowed me to dump the eight years worth of projects into one single document that did all the work for me. I took an export from Xero, which was my online accountancy platform, and copied the results into the spreadsheet. Then I built a few columns that allowed me and now you to tell the spreadsheet what that data in each column means. But the basic strategy behind this practical lesson is that we review which customers, which industries, which types of projects are most profitable to us as businesses. We also look at whether going direct to client or via agency is most profitable. Now, I'm not saying that you're only going to profile and look to attract your most profitable types of clients or industries. You may hate a particular industry. You may hate a particular style of project. And it's important that you enjoy what you do. That's what really counts.

00:04:21:00 - 00:05:22:00
So, the work that we're going to do here is designed to give us a steer as to which our most profitable clients, industries, and types of videos are, as well as if agencies or direct clients are more profitable. And then we're going to use that data to shape our decisions as to who we attract into our business. More on that in a minute. The ultimate goal is to attract a constant flow of these projects. If you create a constant flow of clients that are unprofitable, you're very quickly going to go out of business. But if you're confident that your perfect client is profitable, well, then you can go big on attracting those perfect prospects into your video business with absolute confidence. So, let's get started with the actual work. We'll go through the following steps and it should only take a few minutes for you to do this. Now, to help you with this, below this video, there is a link to two resources. The first is a worksheet that will outline what we're doing here and give you a bit more context. And the second is the spreadsheet that I'll talk about and use within this video.

00:05:22:00 - 00:06:35:00
So, go ahead and download the template spreadsheet, the link to which you'll find below this video. If you have an accountancy platform, download a CSV or XLS file of all your invoices over the past 12 months or as long as you'd like to review. It was eye-opening to do this for the entire 8 years of my production business. But businesses bend and flex. So 12 to 24 months is usually the sweet spot here. If you've got the CSV or XLS, open it, copy and paste the whole sheet into the first sheet of the template spreadsheet. If you haven't got an accountancy platform, you'll have to enter this data manually, which may take a bit of time, but it's absolutely 100% worth it. Within the spreadsheet that you've downloaded, you'll see a sheet that's named manual entry. Simply fill out the list here. Now, we need to go into the template spreadsheet again and update any of the information that we don't have. That may be industry, video genre, or even profitability. If we don't have the profitability on each project, just give it your best estimate. You'll know what's taken a long time and what's been more profitable.

00:06:35:00 - 00:07:32:00
Then jump into the review sections to see what clients, industries, and genres are most profitable for you and whether going direct to client or via agency is the most profitable. And that's it. That's the data review work all done. Now you'll have a really clear idea on what your most profitable client looks like. And remember, this isn't yet your perfect client, but this gives you a good steer as to which projects, clients, types of video, and whether going direct to client or via agency are most profitable. Now, once you've got this complete, you can select the industry that you're going to market to. And just like that, you've completely eradicated any unprofitable industries, clients, or types of videos. Like I said at the start of the video, there are plenty of other ways to increase profitability in your video business. You can develop systems, you can outsource work, you can track your time, you can raise your prices. But this without doubt from 16 years of experience within the industry is the one task that has had the most dramatic effect on the bottom line.

00:07:32:00 - 00:08:04:00
And as I've mentioned, this information is then used to build out your marketing process, which coincidentally is exactly what my free course, the Lead Generation Machine, does for you. Within the video modules, I walk you through the 10-step process that will ensure that you drive a constant flow of profitable opportunities into your video business. And the best thing is that once it's done, it's done. It works for you in the background of your video business, so you can concentrate on the reason that you got into the game in the first place, creating beautiful video content. So, sign up for the free courses below and start building your lead generation machine today.